The Italian book fair said earlier this year that a 300 sq metre space would be dedicated to Saudi literature in 2016, with the country occupying its “guest of honour” slot. But at the end of last month, Sergio Chiamparino, president of the Piedmont region, gave notice that the invitation should be reconsidered, “given the importance, above all at this moment in history, of conveying unambiguous and consistent messages about respect for human rights”.

The book fair announced this week that, while the fair would still be dedicated to Arabic literature, Saudi Arabia would no longer be a guest of honour. The move has prompted a hard-hitting response from Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Italy, Rayed Krimly, who wrote in an open letter that “it is not our custom to interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, and we certainly do not tolerate others trying to interfere in ours”.

Krimly also said that those with “particular interest in human rights” should “deepen their knowledge” of the particular case they are criticising, saying that Nimr had been convicted of 14 offences, including “multiple armed attacks against police vehicles”.

Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, said that the withdrawal of the book fair honour had “probably come as a shock to Saudi Arabia, given that it’s not the first time they’ve been awarded honorary status at a European book fair. But it may well be the first occasion they’ve been publicly humiliated in this way in the publishing industry”.

“The mounting outrage across Europe about Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuse is clearly having an impact,” said Glanville. “This is a country where merely expressing your opinion can lead to imprisonment and brutal corporal punishment. The next question for Turin, though, is will they invite Russia or Egypt again? They also have shocking human rights records, not least when it comes to freedom of expression, but they’ve both been guests of honour.”

The Saudi writer Mohammed Hasan Alwan criticised the decision, writing on the ArabLit blog that “inviting a country as a guest-of-honour or not should not be used as a way of sending a message of disagreement with their politics”, and that “when you prevent ‘illegitimate’ countries from participating in such events, you are basically preventing the patients from being seen by the doctor because they are ‘too sick to cure’”.

“Although some would consider it an act of principle, practically speaking, excluding any country from being a guest-of-honour does little in nudging it to change its policies,” he wrote. “On the contrary, it does a lot in depriving the artists in this country from the opportunity to engage with an international audience. Although the act is aimed at penalising a government, the harm done to the artist is more devastating.”

Speaking to the Guardian on Friday, Ernesto Ferrero, the book fair’s artistic director, struck a conciliatory note, suggesting that discussions concerning Saudi Arabia’s status as a guest of honour had “never reached the level of a formal agreement”.

Administrators decided the selection of one country was “too restrictive”, Ferrero added, so decided to focus “not on a single country, but on a whole literature”.

“This change of mind represents to our eyes not a closing but on the contrary an opening of the Arab cultural world,” he said, “to be explored in its complexity and diversity. In this sense, we have been supported by the appeal of more than 150 Italian scholars of the Arabian world, who condemn any violation of human rights, but are also worried about the growth of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic feelings, in a world more and more shaken by every kind of violence and atrocity, where too little space is reserved for real knowledge and culture.”

This article was amended on 12 October 2014. An earlier version referred to Sergio Chiamparino as “Turin’s regional president”.